


The Great Scorpion Bake Off

by WakeUpDreaming



Series: Holla to the Holidays: December 2015 Collection [7]
Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Paige is a baking drill sargent, Pre 2x12, Schmoop, Team Dynamics, cookie baking, holiday fluff, post 2x11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 10:42:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5413787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WakeUpDreaming/pseuds/WakeUpDreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paige decides it's cookie day before the holidays and, despite a general unwillingness to participate in holiday anything, the team joins in. Mild chaos and a lot of charred sugar ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Great Scorpion Bake Off

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by my annual cookie day with my best friends' family. This year we only fried one batch of sugar cookies.

Happy’s halfway swearing at a motorcycle part when Paige walks in, rain drenching her hair, with a bunch of bags in her arms and Ralph in tow.

“Hello, ladies and gentlemen,” she announces with a grin. “We’re having a cookie day.”

“A what?” Walter asks, looking befuddled. “No, Paige, we’re working.”

“It’s a Friday before Christmas,” she says, “and we make our own hours. Sorry, but you don’t get out of this.”

Toby groans for what Happy thinks is the eightieth time that day. “It’s sixty degrees, pouring, and so ugly outside we haven’t even gotten a tree yet. Let’s just call this holiday what it is: a sham.”

"A schmockery?" Sly asks. Happy snickers.

Paige sends the team a look of such venom that he actually shrinks back.

“Okay, I’ll bake some cookies,” Toby says, looking appropriately cowed.

Happy smiles over at him, pulling off her gloves and gear. It’s a nice change of pace to see him crotchety while she feels pretty good, but there’s still a little tension since their dance, a space between them that Happy isn’t quite sure about.

“You, go clean up,” says Paige to Happy, pointing to the bathroom. “You look like you rolled in a pig pen.”

“Actually, pigs are fairly clean animals,” Ralph interjects. “Happy looks more like she rolled in a dumpster.”

The room is silent until Toby and Happy collapse into laughter at the same time. Ralph breaks into the biggest smile Happy’s ever seen.

“See, Mom?” Ralph says. “I told you I’m funny!”

Happy goes to wash her hands in the bathroom, only to have Toby walk in on her.

She jumps.

“Sorry!” Toby says. “Thought you were at the cookies already. Paige has everybody in a frenzy."

Happy smiles at him as she returns to scrubbing her hands. “Not quite,” she says, holding up her sudsy hands, “I do look like a dumpster, after all.”

Toby smiles. “I wouldn’t say a dumpster."

Happy wipes her hands with a towel and leans against the sink. “You wouldn’t?”

He takes a step toward her, and she straightens. “Happy,” he begins, reaching a hand out for her, “I just wanted to say –”

“If you people aren’t over here in thirty seconds, I’m shoving cookie batter down your pants!” Paige shouts.

The noise is startling enough to break the moment, and Toby and Happy book it out of the bathroom to the kitchen.

“We need to reduce the Guinness, make the sugar cookie dough, and begin the nutmeg logs," Paige rattles. She's wearing an apron. Where did she get an apron?

Happy can't avoid the name of the last cookie, though. “Nutmeg logs?”

“I’m not gonna make the joke with the kid in the room,” Toby says, hands in the air.

Paige glares at all of them. “Get to work.”

"Doing what, exactly," Toby asks.

"Yeah, cookie baking wasn't what they taught us in Orphan School," Happy deadpans.

"Hah," says Paige. "You're finally funny."

Within the next two hours, Paige functions as the most intense drill sergeant in the history of cookie baking, giving each of them task after task.

Then they burn a batch of sugar cookies to charcoal and turn the Guinness syrup into a chunk of charred sugar.

“This was ineffective,” Walter says, looking down at the Guinness with concern.

Paige peeks over his shoulder, then glares at him. “You have the fourth highest IQ ever recorded, and you can’t check the damn heat on a stove. Go sit down.”

“But I –”

Paige points to the cookie icing table. “Sit down.”

Cabe nods up at him from the icing table, working on his seventh cookie after forgetting to set the timer on the sugar cookies. "Listen to the captain, kid," he says knowingly.

Toby is the only one left standing by hour three, diligently paying attention to all of Paige’s instructions and burning nothing.

“How come he’s good at this?” Happy mumbles to Sly as he swirls a snowflake cookie with purple and blue icing.

“Shh,” Sly replies, “I’m trying to feather the icing.”

Happy stares. “What?”

“I was in a lot of therapy when I was younger, and they taught me how to do this with shaving cream and food coloring,” Sly says, eyes still locked on his icing.

Happy nods slowly. “Right.”

She returns to her gingerbread man. She uses a knife to gently shave off part of its head to sculpt it into a hat, and nods in approval. She's kind of proud of her decorating job.

“Hey, Doc, come here," Happy calls. "I've got a question."

“A little busy,” Toby says, his hands in the oven.

She’ll just have to guess.

Five minutes later the last batch of molasses crinkles is set on the cooling rack, and Toby looks particularly delighted with himself.

“Done!” he announces, stepping away from the counter with a flourish. “The cookies are done.”

“Wrong,” says Paige, pointing to a dark brown dough. “But you can take a break. I need to knead the gingerbread a little before I get started.”

Toby walks over to Happy. “What did you need?”

Happy holds up the little gingerbread man with a perfectly sculpted hat. “Your eyes are brown, right?”

“Hazel,” Toby corrects. “But close enough.”

She wiggles the cookie, strangely inspired to make it dance. “I made you a cookie.”

“Aw,” says Toby, reaching for it. “Thanks!”

“No,” Happy says. “Like, I literally made a cookie that’s you.”

He looks at it. “You got my hat perfectly,” he says in astonishment.

She shrugs. “It’s a cookie,” she says. “It wasn’t that hard.”

He looks at her for a moment. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

Happy sets down the cookie Toby and stands. He takes her hand gently and pulls her to a slightly more private corner of the garage. He searches her face but he’s silent, his thumb rubbing her hand gently.

“For somebody who hates the holidays,” Happy says, “you sure had a good time baking.”

“Only because the rest of you kept burning things up,” Toby says with a smile. “I needed to do damage control. And you know Paige. She tells you to do something, you do it.”

Happy shrugs. “You’ve got that right.”

The light tone breaks and Toby takes a deep breath. “We danced,” he says quietly.

Happy nods, forcing herself not to pull her hand away, because this is her lowering shields, this is hard but it’s necessary. “We did,” she says, smiling. “And?”

He takes a step toward her and rests a hand on her hip. The small touch lights a fire through Happy, and she looks up at him, anticipation creeping along her skin like goosebumps. “And I was just really hoping that meant something.”

“It did,” Happy replies simply.

Toby leans in and Happy stands on her toes. The moment their lips meet something feels right; the shields fall, and something better replaces them: Toby.

Somebody turns on the sink and Toby pulls away abruptly.

Happy almost stumbles by the sudden movement. “Are you – is everything alright?”

“Sorry,” Toby says, wincing, “it’s just that Paige made us come to make cookies when I tried to go to the bathroom and I heard the water, and now I’ve really got to pee.”

Happy stifles a laugh. “Go ahead,” she says. She watches him dart off and only feels a little annoyed that they’ve been interrupted so many times that day, but suddenly Ralph is calling for her to bring her high quality gloves to take out the next batch of cookies.

“On my way,” Happy says. They have thirty gingerbread cookies that need to be pulled out of the oven and Happy manages to keep everything from burning.

“You guys need to not put a million cookies in the oven at once,” Happy says. “After nearly burning the place down with the Guinness I thought you would have learned.”

Paige gives her a look. “That was Walter’s fault and you know it.”

“The heat shouldn’t have gone that high!” Walter argues. "I've never used the oven before. I didn't know it got that hot."

“You burned a full batch of Guinness syrup,” Happy says. “You could have checked the heat.”

Paige snickers. “She’s right.”

Walter frowns and sits at the table. “I’m just going to put fractal patterns into the frosting.”

“Good luck,” Ralph said. “I tried that. The frosting is too watery.”

Paige makes Happy help her with the gingerbread, so she can’t talk to Toby when he comes back. She has so much she wants to say, for once, to explain what she means. To explain that she's ready, when he is, to give this a chance. 

But Toby is sent to decorate cookies, and she’s on cookie sheet duty, so they don’t get a chance to talk at all.

When Cooper comes in to take Paige, Cabe, and Toby on a case to investigate the honesty of a new Criminal Informant, Toby barely has the time to squeeze her hand and tell her goodbye.

“We’ll talk later,” he promises, and he offers her a smile before they are swept off.

Happy’s heart falls a little bit, because she wanted a minute to clear things up, but she’s pulled out of it when Sly says, “You know, we really should clean this place up before everything stains.”

Happy takes the cookie table and starts stacking cookies with set frosting into a box.

Her heart skips a beat. Toby has painted a little gingerbread girl to look like Happy, complete with boots and a black jacket, and has put it right next to the Toby cookie like they’re holding hands. What really stuns her, though, is the addition he’s put on Happy’s representation of Toby.

He’s used a little pink frosting to draw a little heart over cookie Toby’s chest.


End file.
